Thoughts about a little of everything…

Represent Me, Publish Me, Love Me…

I’ve never been all that great with setting deadlines for myself. I’m too stubborn and I know myself too well. So I don’t want to set myself up for disappointing myself. Make sense?

But…throughout the rest of this week, I have a job to do. It’s time to write out the query letter that I’m going to send out to potential agents. You know, the letter that tells prospective agents ‘please read me, please love me and validate me, please tell me that I’m a good writer and please drop everything else on your plate to get me published’. Ahh, selling myself and my work through barely disguised begging, and having it done by the end of the day on Saturday. Now this project should be fun…

I wonder how many rough drafts it will take to attempt to describe my novel in a way that I’m ultimately happy with. To take an 80,000 word book (that I’ve been re-working for months and months) and make it sound like the next best seller in a 200-300 word description, well…lets just say that I’m not expecting it to be easy. I’d like it to stand out and seem amazing but, by the end of the week when it’s time to send it out, I might settle just for the final result not to be passed out among the agents’ office peers as a “look at what this schmuck sent to me” example. After all, I want to entertain people, but not exactly in that way…

I guess I could ask those people who have read the novel for their opinions, but, well…since I moved here to Fayette County, I’m kind of missing that aspect of the writing process. I’m missing those people who read through a few chapters at a time, give me their opinion and ask “But then what happens?” So I’m settling for writing my own description about my own book which, if it sounds like that really shouldn’t be that difficult, it at least explains why I was fired from the only sales job that I ever had. Okay, sure, it was selling magazine subscriptions over the phone while I was back in school, but who really wants to wake people up on a Saturday morning to try to sell them a 2-year subscription to Newsweek or Photography Today? My one and only job review came with this criticism – “You always sound surprised when people buy something from you”. And my response? “Surprised? I’m in flipping shock!”.

But I digress…

I believe in my novel way more than I believed in 12 issues of Better Homes and Gardens. I’d just love it if the process of submitting it didn’t involve jumping through hoops and praising my work and could just have them read it and decide for themselves. But…I guess the work will all be worth it first when I see it in print on the bookshelf and then…when I see the movie version up on the big screen…? See agents and editors? I do believe in it!

I think I just need to hire an assistant to do the dirty work of writing up those letters for me and kindly shredding all of the rejection letters when they come back. Someone who will tell me the ones who rejected it are idiots anyway. And will then ask me “But then what happens…?”